This sumptuous portrait in warm colours of a seated model in white undergarment and yellow negligee is first and foremost a hymn to female beauty.

The tanned skin of the woman’s bare legs, breast and face are highlighted in the middle of an interior that is the artist’s, with canvases, a pedestal table on which a bust covered with a cloth is placed.

The model we are looking at, who is painted in all her beauty, is in turn looking at herself in the mirror of a powder case. A game of mutual embellishment, the artist disguises the vision of her beautiful model putting on lipstick.

The model is Micheline Pannebiau, known as “Michou”, the artist’s little cousin who served as a model in several paintings. It was during her stays with her parents in the village of La Teste, near Arcachon, that Germaine Lacaze painted superb beaches, compositions and gardens of the Arcachon basin.